23 Jul Thursday…quick garden round up

Leaving the garden for a week is always a bit of a wrench, but it’s also amazing at this time of year to see how much happens in a week…

( Although I basically left Cheeks in exactly the same position…with roses and no buddleia, and then a week later with buddleia and no roses! )

I spent ages giving everything a hair cut, but particularly the Virginia Creeper…which I’d done just before I left for Scotland too, but it grows ridiculously fast… This year I’ve had a real problem with the snails destroying massive stems of bronze fennel in one evening…they seem to strip them, and then just leave them to wilt, harden and die, and I knew it was going to be a risk leaving them for 7 days and it’s not an easy problem to ask a neighbour to keep an eye on… I did manage to save some though…

…the normal fennel doesn’t seem to be affected , but it never grows as tall as the bronze one…it mustn’t taste as good! ( here’s a flashback picture to a few weeks ago before the hollyhocks and fennel had flowered and the foxgloves gone to seed )

with everything needing a cutting back, it does mean that there are masses of flowers to have around the house and shed all the time though…
I’m desperate to pick some of this yarrow, but it’s the first year it’s flowered in the garden and at the moment there’s only one head, and I sort of like it out there at the moment. When the lavender flowers properly the colours will look fantastic together… I scattered some common hogweed seeds ( not the highly poisonous Giant Hogweed ) last Autumn and they’ve appeared which I’m really excited about…

However, I think I’ve discovered that what I thought was Wild Carrot or Queen Anne’s Lace could in fact be poison Hemlock!!

I’m not entirely sure, but I picked loads of what looks like it both last May and this May and even had a small plant growing in the Honeysuckle a few weeks ago…
…and here it is on the Table!

I’m still not entirely sure how to tell the difference, so if anyone out there has any good recognition tips, they would be really great to hear ( and if you think that what’s on the table here is in fact Hemlock please tell me! )Anyway, back to the saftey of the lacecap hydrangea, which I’m sure looks so much more healthy than last year, and more abundant… There are also loads more succulents underway; some air rooting in the shed, and some tiny ones growing in pots too…

The garden is so lush at the moment…although this is the spot where Cheeks waits and meows at me to be let in to the cosyness ( and sofa ) of the shed!